The Femmebots

Week Two: POV/Music Video Workshop (January 24)
What are the elements of point-of-view? Can you/should you hide your POV? Tone and voice. Translating POV into narrative. Developng your voice. Workshop Screenings.
Assignment: Parallel Action/Montage – “The Story of Your Life” (2) Threads/Locations. Sync Sound (3-5 min)

This week for my directing class I have to tell the story of my life in 3.5 minutes. Last semester I hid behind the mash-up, remember? So this time I have decided to get in front of the camera. I wanna do something similar to that video Nate showed us in your living room in Joatinga. Remember? It was a woman telling a guy her memory of her first love?

I made up the following scene. I thought I could juxtapose it with some footage from my childhood.

Couple at a restaurant. They order wine.

So what’s your story?

You mean the greatest story ever told.

Jesus?

I like talking about myself.

Lawyer (looking at a girl walking by)

Good thing you’re cute.

Good thing you don’t have ADD.

Lawyer looking back
So?

I was the middle child of a blue collar Nuyorican family in Long Island.

Lawyer

Nuyorican.

Femmebot

Nuyorican. But I am not from New York anymore. Hurricane Gloria swept through in the mid 80s and uprooted me to Disney World. I went to high school with Mickey Mouse.

Lawyer

Good place to do mushrooms.

Femmebot

Maybe that’s why I see everything in animation. And Sci fi. I tried to write reality at journalism school in North Carolina. They thought I was a tan white girl.

Lawyer

Nuyorican so much more OBVIOUS!

Femmebot laughing.

I didn’t fit in. So I went to Michigan. Denver. San Francisco. Central America. Miami.

Lawyer

Were you looking for someone?

Femmebot

I guess. Middle children don’t grow up with a strong identity. I was invisible.

Lawyer

Doubt that. Pretty girls are never invisible.

Femmebot

Everyone sees you…they don’t hear you, though.

Lawyer

Awwwwww.

Femmebot stands up.

Lawyer

Middle children are over sensitive too, I see.

Femmebot grabs her purse.

Lawyer

Jealous. Low self esteem. Needs attention constantly but can’t get it so she hides in her bedroom writing in a journal all day about romance and white boys who live on the other side of the tracks.

Femmebot stops. Sits down again.

Fuck off. My dad had four kids with his first wife so technically I am one of 7…the youngest daughter so don’t pigeonhole me.

Lawyer

I think Jesus got you beat.

Femmebot

No… I died too.

Lawyer

For my sins?

Femmebot

No. For mine. When I was 33.

Lawyer

You’re a little freak, aren’t you?

Femmebot

You like freaks.

Lawyer

Better than microfinance.

Femmebot

Absolutely. The afterlife is much more colorful. Mushrooms. Fiction.

Lawyer

Gone back to your roots. So are you going back to New York? Should we just end this now?

Femmebot

No. I already said I’m not from there anymore.

Lawyer

So where?

Femmebot

Brazil.

Lawyer

Huh? Por que?

Femmebot

I lived there in a previous life.

Lawyer

Before you died?

Femmebot

No. I was someone else. In a different time.

Lawyer

Like a hunter gatherer?

Femmebot

Something like that.

Lawyer

Why go back if you’ve already been there? And what about me? You gotta start making me a priority if this is gonna work.

Femmebot

You’re funny. I didnt mean to waste your time…But I realize now, after talking to you, I wanna go home. I wanna be among my own people. I wanna live the last half of my life in the light.

Lawyer

It’s pretty dark here.

Femmebot

Yeah. It was nice meeting you, though. And thanks for helping me remember what to burn on My Great DVD.